To quote the Master of Magnetism, A Dark future is rushing toward them.
Last time on X-Men: Evolution, we
were introduced to Wanda Maximoff. In this universe, she was a patient at a
mental institution for at least a decade following her father abandoning her
when she became unmanageable. She’s sprung by Mystique and brought to the
Brotherhood as their new secret weapon. She gets a crash course in magic by
Agatha Harkness until her powers are deemed acceptably under control. The X-Men
battle the Brotherhood, beating each of the boys, but they’re ultimately overwhelmed
by Wanda’s immense power. The team has their first real loss against the
Brotherhood and don’t take it well. Enough recap, let’s get to it, shall we?
We open on Wolverine tracking
someone through a sewer. He’s also being tracked by a group of men in advanced
battle suits. Ol’ Logan knows they’re there, but as he’s tracking Sabretooth, he’s
really not paying attention to his shadows. They’re able to stay back from him
by following him via heat signatures through the walls. The troops call in a
pod as they continue to track Logan. Ol’ Wolvy finds Sabretooth and tackles
him, but his attack is thwarted by Magneto throwing a grate at him, which disables
him long enough for Sabretooth to get some distance. Suddenly, the pod
descends. It hits Logan with some kind of gel that hardens, trapping him in
place. Sabretooth slips away in the confusion. The pod opens, revealing Dr.
Bolivar Trask. His men tell him they lost Sabretooth due to a magnetic
disturbance, but Trask isn’t concerned, they have a test subject now. He orders
Logan brought to the Facility.
At the Mansion, Jean is tracking Logan
but informs Xavier that she lost him and Sabretooth. Xavier is clearly furious
that they lost their lead to Magneto. Jean apologizes, saying that she wasn’t
ready to use Cerebro after only four sessions, but Xavier tells her not to
worry. Something unforeseen happened, so they need to figure that out.
Mutants Detected.
Storm and Beast are sent to search
the sewer for Wolverine. Oh, Hank’s hands are never going to smell the same.
They find no trace, but when Beast points out that it’s literally impossible
that Logan got into a tussle without slicing something up, Storm gets the idea
to clear the water. She pulls it up in a water spout, and they find the slice
and bent grate, leading them to the obvious Magneto conclusion. While they talk, an owl watches them from the
street level through the grate and flies off.
She returns to the Brotherhood
house, landing in her bedroom and returning to her normal Mystique form. Boom
Boom really did a number on that room, just saying. On the main level, the Brotherhood
Boys are relaxing when Mystique comes down. She tells her boys, and Wanda when
she joins them, that Magneto has apparently abducted Wolverine. She asks Pietro
why Magneto would do that, but Pietro has no idea. She is not happy with that
answer, but decides that it’s a sign that she needs to accelerate her plans.
At the Mansion, the kids are being
put through a hell of a training session. They’re trying to get at a dummy Magneto,
but the drone used to either simulate his powers or defensive tech has taken
out all of the New Mutants, but Amara, and Rogue and Kurt. The drone almost
gets Amara too, but Cyclops destroys it. Xavier starts yelling at Scott to
either make a decision or turn leadership over to Jean. Flustered, Scott
settles on surrounding and overwhelming the Magneto stand in. The surviving
team surround Magneto, but Spyke knocks over some rocks that knock his helmet
off, revealing a bomb. The team scatter, but then are picked off by more Drones.
Xavier calls them into a meeting, clearly angry. He berates Scott for trying an
all-out assault on someone that is always two steps ahead. Scott is clearly
confused by his mentor riding him and the rest of the team so hard, but Xavier
keeps him off balance by bringing up the ONE loss to the Brotherhood again. He
has decided that the New Mutants are still too green to help with this mission,
but needing to boost their ranks, brings in their new recruits. Yep, it’s the
Brotherhood Boys plus Wanda. Yes, I’m probably going to refer to them as such
from now on. The X-Men are obviously upset by this, but Xavier is adamant they
need the Brotherhood for this. They’re still riding high on their win, with
Lance being so bold as to say that the X-Men clearly need new leadership.
Scott, clearly furious, says that Lance can have the job and storms off. Jean
wants to go after him, but Xavier tells her to leave him, they need to focus on
the mission.
 |
| A much more impressive team. |
We cut to an armored car pulling up
to a factory. Once inside, they open the back door and pullout Logan. His hands
and feet are bound, but Logan, being the Wolverine, is able to kick the ass of
a pair of guards anyway. He’s stopped by Trask who activates his cuffs shock
function. They take Wolverine to an elevator and drop down to sub-basement
levels. Wolverine, while still groggy, notes the tech is more SHIELD than Magneto.
Trask gets mad, saying that while he worked with SHIELD long enough to learn
about Mutants, he cut ties with them years ago. He spouts some human supremist
bull. Logan points out that some Mutants want peace, but Trask isn’t
interested. He’s going to show Logan his new equalizer.
Jean picks up on Logan’s healing
factor and informs Xavier, whom tells Jean to scramble the Teams. Beast and
Kitty fly the X-Jet with the Brotherhood Boys plus Wanda. Meanwhile, Mystique
slips into a computer lab and activates the DefCon 4 Protocol. Xavier the joins
the rest o the X-Men on the Velocity. Storm wants to wait for Scott, but Xavier
tells her they can’t wait. Despite clearly not beig happy leaving Scott behind,
Storm follows Xavier’s orders.
After the Velocity takes off, DefCon
4 activates. The Mansion goes into lockdown, sealing the New Mutants inside.
Amara is the only one that seemed to figure out what is going on and makes a
break for the exit. She gets out just before the blast shields drop. The metal
is so thick that it stops Sam’s Cannonball tackle, he was a half-step behind
Amara but was too slow. Amara tries to blast the shields, but the security cannons
come online. She’d have probably been taken out if Tabitha hadn’t pulled up
seconds before in Lance’s jeep and warned her. Tabitha boom booms her way into
the grounds to save Amara and the two drive off. Tabitha blowing the fountain
gun to smithereens as they go. They find Scott musing on his car at the local cliff.
They give him the lowdown on the situation before carpooling in his car back to
the mansion. Tabitha explains on the ride that she didn’t know what was
happening, but she came to the mansion to warn the professor that Mystique is
back and in control of the Brotherhood. I assume the Mansion and Brotherhood
house are far enough apart that she was able to justify waiting until the
Brotherhood left to steal Lance’s jeep again. Or something. Scott is very
confused as to why the Brotherhood is working with them if Mystique is pulling
the strings again, and says something is very wrong.
We see Logan dropped into a fighting
pit. Trask unveils the prototype of his guardian of the human race, his
Sentinel. As a prototype, this version doesn’t have the uncanny valley
realistic face or apparently even the ability to give warnings like the mass-produced
models in other series, but it’s got enough weapons to make up for that fact. The
colossal machine is able to detect Logan’s Mutant Signature… whatever that
actually means, and starts blasting him with its chest cannon. Logan, being the
damn Wolverine, is able to dodge around the fire and even gets some slices in
after dropping a crane on it, but the short man does not last against the giant
robot. He tries to climb a wall to escape, but it laser blasts the concrete,
dropping him to the ground and burying him.
Scott and the girls arrive at the waterfall
that covers the X-Jet’s runway. He grabs a visor that he keeps in his glove compartment
and prepares to climb. The other two are skeptical but he’s adamant that it’s
the only way in. Inside the Mansion, Sam is still trying to Cannonball through,
but is only leaving dents. Bobby and him bid a hasty retreat when the Mansion’s
foyer cannons come online as well. In the computer room, the security system
reveals that it’s initiating the final stages of DefCon 4, the self-destruct protocol.
It’ll initiate in 10 minutes.
We cut to an industrial area where
five of Magneto’s metal spheres are flying by. The pods land and open,
revealing Magneto’s new team. It’s not mentioned here, but they’re called the
Acolytes. We have Sabretooth, which was fairly obvious. He also brough along
Pyro, another typical recruit for Magneto’s teams. No, the shockers are the
last two, a Cajun man shuffling a deck of cards in his hands, and a very large,
one might say Colossal, man that suits himself up in steel. And then Magneto
rises to join them. This is definitely not good.
The episode ends on the Sentinel digging
through the rubble and finding Logan. It lifts him to its eyes, registers that
he’s still alive and sets to terminate him.
As far as setups for season finales
go, this was a damn good one. We had a couple major status quo shakeups, with
the overworked and confused Scott quitting the team AND the Brotherhood Boys
and Wanda “joining” the X-Men. Mystique has got a major plan in motion that
uses the X-Mansion against the X-Men. Anti-Mutant activist and overall racist
psycho Bolivar Trask is whipping out his personal biggest guns to fight the Mutant
threat. Oh, and Magneto has shown up with a team including two of the most
Iconic X-Men! My jaw dropped when I was a kid and saw Gambit and Colossus with
Magneto. Gambit… I can kind of get, he’s been a wild card for years and him
joining Magneto if he met him first tracks. No, the real surprise with Colossus,
the pillar of morality and decency siding with Magneto. We learn that it’s more
complicated eventually. And as teams go, it’s a solid one. He’s got two close
combat types, with Sabretooth being more offensive and Colossus more defensive;
Gambit for midrange or close fighting, depending on if he runs out of cards or
not; and then Pyro and himself for long ranged. All the bases covered. If you paid
attention to my not-so-subtle hints, I think you can guess what Mystiques big
play is, but I’ll get into that next time. So, we’ve got the X-Men and Brotherhood,
the Acolytes, and a Sentinel all converging on one spot. Oh, this is going to
be messy. See you then.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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